Star Wars Battlefront II Impressions

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We court both sides of the force.

By Juan Castro

Lucasarts showed off near-complete builds of Star Wars Battlefront II at a recent press event in San Francisco. A tucked-away building at the Presidio housed the dozen television sets and computers running different versions of Battlefront II. Hidden in a quaint room toward the back of the building sat four PSPs attached to development kits. IGN staffers were on the scene to check everything out, but also to partake in copious amounts of free turkey sandwiches and see gents dressed in storm trooper outfits.

One of the first places we assaulted was the room with the four PSPs. We sat down and let the kind folks from Pandemic (the game's developer, along with the programming team at Savage Entertainment for the PSP conversion) give us the drill on Battlefront II on PSP. Like the console versions, Battlefront II for PSP aims for en epic Star Wars experience where players choose a faction to join (Imperial, Rebel, CIS and Clone Troopers) then battle it out on a variety of famous locations such as the swamplands of Dagobah and the ice planet Hoth. Battlefront II packs 13 maps in all, spanning the original film trilogy and even a few locations from the last movie, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

The game splits between a series of different game modes, but three in particular are exclusive to the PSP. Each of these single-player "challenges" contains around five missions. Rebel Raider had us acting out rescue missions as part of the Rebel Alliance. It played very much like a Capture-the-Flag style multiplayer match, only instead of securing flags we had to find fallen comrades, contraband and other such rebel necessities. The second mode, called Imperial Enforcer, had us visiting different planets and killing of the native species. On Naboo, we had to slay a bunch of Gungans. On Kashyyyk, we ran around murdering Wookies.

The last exclusive mode, Rogue Assassin, put us in the role of mercenary. We had to visit four different maps to kill off specific character closes. For example, we'd be tasked with killing a clone trooper of specific rank. The job required us to weed through several innocent bystanders, find our man and then take him out. Of course, no one loves an assassin, so there's plenty of opposition as well. Once we fired on our target, we had little time to complete the job before getting iced ourselves.

Battlefront II on PSP shares a number of similarities with its console and PC brethren. Those who plan on buying Battlefront II on PSP will have access to the same number of vehicles, weapons, character classes and hero figures, as well as every game mode. But that's not to say everything will be same. As mentioned above, the PSP exclusive modes are there for a reason. Pandemic designed them with mobility in mind and therefore each is very well suited for quick game sessions. Players can jump into these three game modes, play for five minutes and then shut off their PSPs.